catfishing

Catfishing is the act of creating a false identity on the internet — typically using another person's name, photographs and personal information — in order to lure one or more other people into a relationship built on trust, love or friendship. The term originates from the American documentary 'Catfish' from 2010 and has since become a widespread expression in crime journalism and the true crime genre.

Unlike traditional identity fraud, which often has a purely financial motive, catfishing in the cases where the term is used in a true crime context is primarily about psychological manipulation. The perpetrator constructs a persistent, fictitious persona — sometimes over a period of years — and maintains the illusion towards the victim through social media, text messages and other digital channels. The Cari Farver case is an extreme example: here the perpetrator used digital impersonation not merely to deceive, but as part of a homicide in which the victim's identity was carried on in order to conceal the crime.

Under Danish law, 'catfishing' does not exist as an independent criminal-law designation or statutory category. The specific acts can, however, typically be subsumed under existing provisions depending on what has actually taken place. Unauthorised use of another person's name, image or personal information may, among other things, fall under rules on identity misuse and violation of personal rights in the Danish Penal Code (straffeloven) or in data protection legislation, but the precise legal classification always depends on the specific circumstances of the case.

Criminal liability is aggravated where the catfishing serves as a means of committing other offences, for example threats, sexual extortion (sextortion), stalking or fraud. In such cases it is typically the derived offences that form the primary criminal-law framework, rather than the construction of the false identity in itself. On Krimidex the term is used as an analytical and descriptive term describing a specific modus operandi in digital crime cases — not as a reference to a particular Danish penal provision.